Philosophy of Worship - Full Version

PHIOLOSOPHY OF WORSHIP

THE OBJECT OF WORSHIP

My body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water (Psalm 63:1).

The inner need to worship is found in every group, every culture and in every individual.  Everybody has a need to look beyond oneself, weather it is looking to humans, a group of people, or to deity/deities.  Christian worship helps direct that need to the proper place, to the one God who made us.  True worship is directed to Him and only Him.

The God who created us revealed Himself to us through the writings of the Old and New Testament and ultimately through His Son Jesus, who together with the Father and the Holy Spirit are the proper objects of our worship.

FORMS OF WORSHIP

God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:2).

Although true worship is directed to the one God through His Son, worship takes on different forms for each individual, for each church, for each generation, and for each culture.  However diverse forms worship may take, the above mentioned scripture defines the universal elements of worship. 

THE TIMES OF WORSHIP

One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his/her own mind (Romans 14:5).

The Law of Moses set aside days or weeks for the Sabbath and for festivals.  During the Church’s 2,000 year history, some generations, groups or individuals focused on certain times to worship (in chapter 8:1-3, the Didache set aside 3 times a day for prayer and 2 days a week for fasting).   The New Testament, however, gives no preference for one day over the others, but rather suggests that each person walk according to his/her own convictions.

THE PLACES OF WORSHIP

…For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them (Matthew 18:20).

And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near (Hebrews 10:25).

Although we can worship God any time and in any place, individually and corporately, the Bible encourages regular corporate worship.  When Paul said you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, he did not say “you” as an individual are the temple, he said “you (plural)” are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16 & 2 Corinthians 6:16).

THE DISCIPLINES OF WORSHIP

We worship in many ways which include devotions, in prayer, fasting, preaching of sermons, sacraments, reading and in times set apart for God such as church attendance and involvement in church activities.

THE GENERATIONS OF WORSHIP

Then the people of Israel—the priests, the Levites and the rest of the exiles—celebrated the dedication of the house of God with joy (Ezra 6:16).

Tradition connects present and oncoming generations with generations of the past.  Tradition also connects us to our own past in that when we get older we like to connect to what we grew up in.  When young and old worked together on God’s house in the Book of Ezra, there was a division between generations, so that when work had begun on the temple, the older generation wept while the younger one celebrated (see chapter 3).  However, when the temple was finished, they all celebrated together.  As we worship and build the kingdom together, we find unity in worship.

THE QUALITY OF WORSHIP

When Moses was building the tabernacle, God chose certain people who were filled with the Spirit of God and with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs (Exodus 35:31).  God is still concerned about the craftsmanship, about excellence, and about the creative details of worship today. 

According to Pope John Paul II:

Today, as yesterday, musicians, composers, liturgical chapel cantors, church organists and instrumentalists must feel the necessity of serious and rigorous professional training. They should be especially conscious of the fact that each of their creations or interpretations cannot escape the requirement of being a work that is inspired, appropriate and attentive to aesthetic dignity, transformed into a prayer of worship when, in the course of the liturgy, it expresses the mystery of faith in sound.

(Hakim, Naji (2003). "Music in the Catholic liturgy in France at the end of the 20th century". Retrieved 2010-08-16)

THE RELEVANCE OF WORSHIP

21^st Century cultures are changing faster than at any other time in all of history.  Because we are facing such speed in change, the church cannot hold on tightly to what worked in the past.  For sure, we must learn from the past, build upon what the past has accomplished, and  use many of the tools past generations has given to us; but we must change with the times to remain effective servants to the present generation.  We are continuously moving into a new world and we must be able to adjust with the changes in our culture, or we will lose much of the next generation.

In this generation, media and technology has dominated our culture and changed the way we work, the way we play and the way we live.  It is no surprise that the churches that grow the most have learned how to use these tools for the glory of God.

Even though we must be relevant, we must also be careful about allowing the world to dictate too much of what worship should be.  We are to use the world's tools in godly ways, and not allow the world to dictate to us what worship can and should be.

THE SACRIFICE OF WORSHIP

Believers in the Old Testament offered sacrifices that were costly for most people of the day, giving from their flocks and from their crops.  Although they gave for different reasons (such as for sin, fellowship, thanksgiving, and tithing), there was one dynamic that was the same for every sacrifice.  Every sacrifice cost the giver something they needed connected to their survival.  Givers sacrificed for the work of God in their lives and in the lives of the worshiping community.

Sacrificing animals and crops is no longer a Biblical command, as Jesus has become our supreme sacrifice, but we still sacrifice financially by tithing according to the command of Jesus (Matthew 23:23).

THE CHALLENGES OF 21ST CENTURY WORSHIP

1. Remaining theologically sound while focusing on being relevant.
2. Bringing in past traditions and forms and staying relevant.
3. Connecting worship of the individual to the entire body of believers.  We are not simply a Church of individuals with each person individually worshiping God.  We are a body of believers connected in faith and in corporate worship. 
4. Using neglected forms of worship.  Many of the psalms praise God, and most churches focus every service around praise; but there are also psalms of lament, psalms of thanksgiving, and psalms of supplication.  The challenge today to find ways to include these other forms psalms into worship.
5. Not falling into the traps of the culture the 21^st Century American culture.  While much in our culture can be used for good and can be used for God’s glory in worship, there are some things that can hinder growth in our faith.  Some examples include our American individualism and “can do” spirit.  Although there is a lot of good in these cultural values, we must be careful to bring Christ and the Bible into these cultural principles and not let these values to become preeminent in our faith.
6. Teaching and experiencing the holiness and the fear of God. 

Memorizing the New Testament - Books not Verses

There really are two ways to memorize the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments. 

The most common way is to pick a verse and memorize it.  John 3:16 is probably the most popular.  After John 3:16, one memorizes another verse from another book, like Romans 3:10, then on to another.  Kids who go to Sunday School get a hand full of these.  Kids who are homeschooled or go to a private Christian schools generally get more. 

The second way to memorize, which I think is rare, is to memorize whole books of the Bible.  I prefer this for the reasons I am about to explain.

THE PROBLEM WITH MEMORIZING INDIVIDUAL VERSES - CREATING NEW CONTEXT

Scripture is meant to be memorized, studied and pulled apart in order to understand it better. Unfortuneately, memorizing key verses is not the best way to understand the Bible.  In fact, it can be misleading at times.

I know a preacher who decided to memorize thousands of individual verses, pulling them out of the nest of each book they lie.  In other words, he memorizes each verse without any concern for the rest of the book.  He assumes that each verse has its own message apart from the rest of its context.  Each verse for him stands alone. 

As a result of his style of memorizing, he is able to make individual verses fit into his teachings a whole lot easier than letting them remain within their original surroundings, and because his focus is the end times, he is able to fit hundreds and thousands of verses into his "end times" framework.  What he misses is that each verse he quotes belongs to a chapter which belongs to a book - all of which is called "context." 

One cannot truely understand a verse without understanding its context; and to pull a verse out of its context, which this preacher does (as so many other people do), is to strip it away from its moorings.  It fills the verse with other meaning it was never intended to have; and it strips the verse from meaning it had when the writer wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

People who memorize individual verses never intend to take them out of context.  Actually, they assume the context of the verse supports the modern meaning they give to it, but in reality that verse is forced to say what the person assumes it means.  Eventually that verse completely takes on the meaning the person has assigned to it.  And in time, as that person shares that verse from the pulpit, with others, or on TV, the verse begins to come alive in its new context, no longer just for the preacher/teacher, but now for a whole group of Christians.  No longer belonging to its original context, the verse now has found a new home in the context of some 21st Century issue or supporting some 21st Century doctrine, whether that issue or doctrine is good or bad. 

Among the classes I teach, one of my favorites is one that teaches students how to study the Bible.  In it we learn the importance of context, and we learn how to study each verse in relation to its context - its surrounding verses and its surrounding chapters.  Most students love the class, because they learn how to read and how to study the Bible. 

During the class each student chooses one small passage to study in context of its day and its context within the book it was written.  They study the grammar and the words within their passage.  At the end of the class, we get together and discuss what stood out in the class.  For many, they learn that their life time's favorite verses had a different meaning than they gave it until that class.  In other words, until that class, they read their own lives so much into the verses, that those verses took on a meaning they weren't designed to give. 

I think a lot of the students are as disappointed as they are excited.  Excited to learn the importance of context and grammar.  They are excited to learn new depths to the verses they loved so much, but disappointed because the meaning they gave to the verses meant a lot to them.
THE PROBLEM WITH MEMORIZING INDIVIDUAL VERSES - CREATING NEW HIERARCHY
As I mentioned above, the purpuse of memorizing individual verses is to support a theological / emotional doctrine or to support some arguement in some 21st Century issue.  But taking verses out of their nest and filling them with 21st Century meaning is not the only problem of memorizing individual verses.  By picking certain verses, one gives the chosen verses more imortance than other scripture.

Now at this point I do have to clarify - Jesus himself said there are weightier matters of the Law; so, yes, there are some issues that are more important in the Bible than others.  However, memorizing verses and not books focuses the importance on today's issues and on supporting today's group doctrines rather than the issues, problems and doctrines of the original writings.  And once again, I admit that the issues of the 1st Century were different than today's.  Sometimes this is okay, but sometimes we can neglect important issues because we are so wrapped up in our own group's focus of the day.

The weightier matters that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 23 are not the weightier matters of most of today's Christians.  Faith was important to Jesus, and it is important to us today, but Jesus also said justice and mercy were on top of the list of what is important, and those are poorly defined if not neglected today, just as they were in Jesus' day. 
In Jesus' day the religious focused on the details of tithing, keeping the Sabbath, keeping holy, and following the Law.  But Jesus saw that by focusing on those things (which Jesus admitted needed not to be neglected), they neglected even more important things. 

So there are some things in the Bible that are more important than others.  Choosing individual verses does not reflect the importance that the writers of the Bible chose; choosing individual verses reflects what is important to us.